CHAPTER 24
Light, sleep, and awaken.
This time, Cait's team found themselves on one side of a skywalk connecting two cubicle farms in an office complex. They got their bearings quicker this time, but so did the other team, and Cait was barely able to dive in front of Dawn before one of Fingerguns' beams took her between the eyes. As it was, it hit Cait in the tits and did nothing but tickle. Kennedy wasted no time in linking up with Dawn and joined her in conjuring cover that they began moving between as more beams flew their way.
"Sonder," Cait said quietly, keeping her body between the opposing team and the girl's. "You get toxic shit from Dawn right? Can you fill up that skywalk with toxic fog? Spores?"
Kennedy nodded as Cait felt a beam plink into her back. The antlered goth held out a hand, and a thick pink haze began to billow out of it, snaking into the skywalk and quickly filling it with opaque fog.
"Okay, I'm gonna charge-"
"You fucking idi-"
"They won't expect it! B-money, flank around, swing between buildings if you have to. I'm gonna take out Guns, more if I can, but they'll assault these two after I do, you gotta take em in the ass." Cait explained, already sprinting for the skywalk. She forwent her punching boosts so the booms wouldn't give away her approach. Deep, hacking coughs rang out as she neared the adjoining building. Apparently Bullrush had tried to brave the fog.
Just as she judged she was about to break out, she couldn't believe her luck when Fingerguns' voice said: "You guys hear footsteps?"
Cait locked onto the sound, boosting herself forward with a booming right straight. As she burst out of the fog, she was heading right for Fingerguns' shocked face. Barely touching the ground, she threw a sonic left that turned his chest into boy nuggets. She had just enough time to feel self satisfied by the kill when, with a roar, Bullrush hit her with a donkey kick that could have caused seismic activity. Cait tumbled head over heels through cubicles, then smashed through the far window and out of the fight.
Or she thought she was out, at least. A tentacle snagged her waist as BREAST MAN swung around the opposite corner of the building. Looked like he could make these things sticky too, given that he seemed to be hanging off glass. He pulled them up near the shattered window, and Cait had to hold back a laugh when he put the tip of a tentacle in front of his gaping maw.
SHHHH
Cait nodded, listening to Warhawk's team adjust to losing a member.
"You call a rookie an idiot for chargin', last thing you expect 'em to do next is fuckin' charge." Warhawk's voice held a bit of reluctant respect, which Cait savored. "Lira's Bulletproof Bimbo ain't as dumb as she looks."
Alright, less flattering.
"On me folks," Warhawk continued. "What they got left ain't gettin through my wings and I can blow that smoke back at 'em."
A whooshing sound painted a pretty good picture of what was happening, alongside the clatter of gunfire as Warhawk covered her own advance. Some splintering crashes indicated the rest of Cait's team wasn't taking it lying down though. BREAST MAN tapped her shoulder.
GONNA TOSS YOU
"Don't tell the elf." Cait whispered as BREAST MAN drew her back with three strong tentacles.
He whipped her through the window like an MLB pitcher, literal tons of force behind the throw. Cait shot towards the opposing team, as they advanced on hers. For the second time in a minute, one of their members got gibbed as Cait exploded Hotglue's skull with a flying punch.
That didn't happen quietly, and Bullrush noticed instantly. Obviously not quick enough to save Hotglue, but quick enough to grab Cait's leg as she shot past. With a bestial roar, he slammed her straight through the floor of the skywalk and she crashed into the ground far below at speed.
Truly out of the fight this time, her viewpoint switched to a top-down of the floor the fight was still taking place on. Bullrush and Warhawk were back to back in the skywalk, clear of fog now with the fresh hole and Warhawk's wingbeats. Kennedy and Dawn pelted her with attacks from behind their conjured cover. Warhawk's armored wings stopped Wilds Witch's spears without issue, but the organic metal was starting to hiss and smoke under Kennedy's rot bombs. She returned fire with her automatic handguns, but had clearly been planning on Bullrush and Hotglue's support to finish things off.
Bullrush was no fool though, and correctly assumed Cait hadn't been able to get back in the building herself. His eyes scanned the cube farm, going wide with momentary terror when BREAST MAN burst through the nearest bank of cubes, a chaos vortex of writhing tentacles with a toothy maw in the middle. The fear left quickly though, and Bullrush snorted, dug a foot into the ground, then executed his namesake, leaping over the Cait shaped hole in the floor and charging the cosmic horror.
His rush ripped off a few tentacles before BREAST MAN was able to get the rest of himself out of the way. The minotaur grabbed one of the trailing tentacles, clearly planning to use it to slam BREAST MAN around, but in an impressive display of resolve and quick thinking, B-man severed his own limb, whipping one of his others through it. His remaining whirling limbs proved to be too much for Bullrush, and the erudite minotaur died a death of a thousand cuts under his all-angle assault. BREAST MAN lost every tentacle but one in the fight though, even regenerating some partway through, but he was clearly out of steam.
With a growl, Warhawk spared a second to finish him with a shot from one of her guns. In that second, Dawn struck with a sharpened vine she's been snaking up through Cait's hole in the floor. It speared up like lightning, and Warhawk didn't even get to scream as it entered below her chin and exited the top of her skull.
Again, the dream crashed out.
"Well, fuck." Warhawk stated, clearly a little in shock. "That wasn't the lesson reinforcement I expected it to be."
"BREAST MAN!" Claudio's voice boomed. "You are a nightmare. I can't believe you beat me!"
Cait winced at the word choice. It was clearly meant as a compliment, but she doubted B-money would take it as one, at least not completely. Whether or not that was true, the little horror ball still responded with his thumbs up tentacles.
"Yeah, I mean shit." Warhawk stood, shaking herself as she did so. "We ain't the fuckin B team around here. This should be as edifyin' for y'all as it is embarrassin' for us."
She went around the group again, giving much more subdued but still insightful feedback. She made the good point that in real life, any fight that ended up with one of them dead wouldn't feel like a victory, so until they could achieve lossless wins consistently there was plenty of room for improvement.
They went two more rounds, both losses as the senior team took the rookies much more seriously after their own defeat. In one, Cait had been baited into attacking Warhawk, not realizing her wings could actually take one of her nano-enhanced punches. Instead of clipping her wings, she'd left herself open to a dousing by Hotglue, and without Cait's support Fingerguns had methodically picked the rest of the team off while everyone else covered him. The second came down to another BREAST MAN v. Bullrush title fight, but the minotaur had figured out that the tentacle monster couldn't kill him fast enough to stop him from just stomping in and crushing him, albeit taking massive damage to do so.
"Alright, that's it for today folks," called Warhawk after their fourth bout. It'd been damn near even, and her thought was that most of the mistakes had been due to growing mental fatigue on both sides.
"Remember, 1 out of 4 is a fuckin' impressive showing against a team like us, 'specially with y'all bein' together for less than a week, and all of two fights. Good work." They ran down the line, shaking hands with each other, all of them but Cait doing their best to scrub their minds of the times they'd been killed by the person shaking their hand. When Cait got to Bullrush, he gripped her hand tight with both of his in and didn't let go.
"It makes no sense for us to fight, tactically," He said with a broad smile. "All we'd do is tie each other up. In the best case I hold you down, worst case you'd kill me. But I'd still like to have that fight, mano-y-mano, some other time when Dreamboat's up for it."
Cait returned his big smile with one of her own.
"I'll make you regret offering that," Cait said with a wink. To be honest, she didn't believe that. Mega-punches or no, Bullrush had insane strength, speed, and most importantly, skill. She'd probably lose, but she'd learn doing it.
Warhawk set another session up for the same time next week, confirming it with Dreamboat.
She ran down the things they needed to think over, and re-impressed on Kennedy and Breastman how much more effective they'd be with some weaponry. Cait too, since it had occurred to her that Amaranthine would make a hell of a walking weapons platform. Goodbyes said and trash talk finished, the groups went their separate ways.
"You guys as fucking starving as I am?" Cait asked, to a chorus of affirmatives.